Aline Ghilardi
Photograph of Newly Discovered Fossilized Vomit With Bone Remains of a Pterosaur
For decades, researchers believed they were looking at fish remains. They were completely mistaken. This is the first extinct species ever found in fossilized vomit — and it’s a pterosaur.
About 110 million years ago, a dinosaur ate two pterosaurs and four fish and for some reason vomited them up.
A rare combination of geological conditions preserved this vomit of dinosaurs, which human researchers excavated, eventually cataloging them simply like a cluster of fish remains — nothing special.
Only when Aline Ghilardia paleontologist at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, in Brazil, and her colleagues looked more closely at the fossilized remains and realized that the fossil was too strange and detailed to be just fish.
Your suspicions were correct. The fossil contains the remains of an entirely new pterosaur — the first extinct species ever discovered inside… well, fossilized vomit.
The discovery was presented in a publication on Monday in the journal Scientific Reports.
The pterosaur, which was given the name of Bakilib has playedhad a “distinctive combination of characteristics of the jaw and teeth not present in any known pterosaur,” Ghilardi, lead author of the article, told .
“This is also the first time that a Ctenochasmatida rare group of pterosaurs, is discovered in Brazil or in rocks from this era”, added the researcher.
How vomit becomes fossilized
Bromalites — fossilized digestive remains such as coprolites (feces) and regurgitated (vomit) — They are very rare but they do exist. However, very specific conditions are necessary for regurgitates to survive for hundreds of millions of years, according to Ghilardi.
First, vomiting must be buried very quickly in a calm, low-energy environment, and the mucus that binds the material must be maintained over time.
“Otherwise, they are destroyed by rain, waves, wind or scavengers, or they simply disintegrate”, explains Ghilardi.
The material inside is often partially processed or fragmented, which means that paleontologists often need to conduct a microscopic examination meticulous two remains.
The “fish” analysis
In this case, however, the remains of the pterosaur were surprisingly clear and identifiable; Ghilardi and colleagues were almost immediately able to flag what strongly resembled the “very peculiar teeth of the Ctenochasmatid pterosaurs”, he recalled.
However, given the rarity of these pterosaursthe team was hesitant to call this a new discovery. In fact, researchers didn’t even realize that the fossil itself was a regurgitatedalthough they noted that the style and arrangement of the bones were highly unusual.
After a few rounds of checks that involved crossing photographs with other colleagues, the team decided to investigate the fossil in greater detail.
Considered Several candidates for what the fossil could bebut the “pieces started to fit” when they considered that this could be a regurgitate containing pterosaur bones, explains Ghilardi.
“What surprised me most it was how an apparently ordinary specimen ended up containing something completely unexpected”, notes the researcher.
A unusually clean preservation of bones also allowed the team to paint a detailed picture of how the Bakilib has played could have been: elongated jaws densely populated with long, slender teeth, shedding “new light on the evolutionary trajectory of filter-feeding pterosaurs.”
These pterosaurs would have captured food in a similar way to modern flamingos. As for Whose vomit was this?researchers still aren’t sure.
At the same time, this represents yet another paleontological “rediscovery” in which modern methods revealed new information about a previously excavated fossil.
The new pterosaur, for example, been there for decades at the Câmara Cascudo Museum in northeastern Brazil until Ghilardi’s team more or less by chance detected its unique structure.
“Moments like this remind us why paleontology seems so magical,” said Ghilardi. “Extraordinary discoveries may be hidden silently in a museum drawerwaiting for the right moment to reveal themselves.”
